2018.02.08 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews
Hubert L. Dreyfus, Background Practices: Essays on the Understanding of Being, Mark A. Wrathall (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2017, 258pp., $45.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780198796220.
Reviewed by Mark Okrent, Bates College
Hubert Dreyfus died this past April at the age of 87, after a distinguished career in which his ideas and personality influenced several generations of scholars working in a variety of different areas. The publication of this collection of essays, written over a period of more than 20 years and expertly edited by Dreyfus' student and long-time friend and collaborator Mark Wrathall, is thus both timely and greatly appreciated. This is especially the case because of the organizing principle of this anthology, the notion of 'background practices', a concept which is, arguably, Hubert Dreyfus' most important contribution. For it is this idea, that being habituated into a set of background practices. . .